| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
27 Dec 2005 04:18:34 PM |
| Object: |
OT: Power That Bush Can't Just Take |
Power That Bush Can't Just Take
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600516.html
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atheistrefuge/messages?msg=1791.7671
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, December 27, 2005; Page A25
Since the holiday season is a time of generosity and goodwill toward
all -- even those who torture the Constitution and hoodwink the nation
into ill-advised wars -- let's do a little thought experiment.
Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/opinion/27tues2.html
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atheistrefuge/messages?msg=1786.9836
The Census Bureau should get to work immediately on procedures that
would allow it to count inmates where they actually live.
The Road to Riches
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/5ba95f4634dec9cd
and thread
The Road to Riches
http://tinyurl.com/55nzo
A Blueprint for the Future
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/59c28cd6dfe6f60f
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: OT: Power That Bush Can't Just Take |
28 Dec 2005 05:10:02 PM |
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On 27 Dec 2005 14:18:34 -0800, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote:
Power That Bush Can't Just Take
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/26/AR2005122600516.html
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atheistrefuge/messages?msg=1791.7671
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, December 27, 2005; Page A25
Since the holiday season is a time of generosity and goodwill toward
all -- even those who torture the Constitution and hoodwink the nation
into ill-advised wars -- let's do a little thought experiment.
Let's assume that George W. Bush's claim of virtually unfettered
presidential power is not just an exercise in reclaiming executive
perks that ***** Cheney believes were wrongly surrendered after
Watergate. Let's assume that Bush genuinely believes he needs the
right to blanket the nation with electronic surveillance, detain
indefinitely anyone he considers a terrorist suspect, make those
detainees disappear into secret, CIA-run prisons, and subject them to
"waterboarding" and other degradations. Let's assume for the moment
that the president's only desperate motivation is to prevent another
day like Sept. 11, 2001.
Let's go even further and assume he decided to invade Iraq for the
same reason. Even in a thought experiment, we can't forgive the way he
snowed the country into believing there was some connection between
Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks; nor can we forget the way he hyped the
flawed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction -- we're being
generous here, not stupid. But let's assume that however calculated
and cynical the machinations, and however wrongheaded the decision to
go to war, the underlying motive was purely to avoid another
catastrophic terrorist attack.
All right: Given these overly kind assumptions, can this
administration's usurpation of power somehow be justified?
Every time I work it through, the answer I come up with is no. The
president has no right to ignore the rule of law as if it were a mere
nuisance.
The problem is that if the president really were determined to do
anything it takes to prevent another terrorist strike, why not suspend
habeas corpus, as Lincoln did during the Civil War? That way you could
arrest everyone who could possibly be a terrorist, or who once lived
next door to a suspected terrorist's uncle, and you could hold those
people as long as you wanted. Why stop at surveillance of
international telephone calls and e-mails? Why not listen in on, say,
all interstate calls as well? Or just go for it and scarf up all the
domestic communications the National Security Agency's copious
computers can hold?
Why stop at waterboarding? Why not go all the way and pull out some
fingernails, if that would give Americans another tiny increment of
security? Wouldn't electric shocks make us safer still? Just order the
White House lawyers to draw up yet another thumb-on-the-scale legal
opinion explaining how torture isn't really torture, and have at it.
If potential terrorists may be walking among us, why not have police
officers stand on street corners all day and subject anyone who looks
"suspicious" to questioning and a search? That's what Fidel Castro
does in Cuba, and believe me, Cuba is an extremely safe country.
In Vietnam we destroyed villages in order to save them. In this war on
terrorism, why not go ahead and destroy our freedoms in order to save
them?
The reason we don't do these absurd things, of course, is that we see
a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. That bright line
is the law, drawn by Congress and regularly surveyed by the judiciary.
It can be shifted, but the president has no right to shift it on his
own authority. His constitutional war powers give him wide latitude,
but those powers are not unlimited.
If you go along with my experiment and assume that the president has
the best of motives, then the problem is that he wants to protect the
American people but doesn't trust us.
There can be no freedom without some measure of risk. We guarantee
freedom of the press, which means that newspapers sometimes print
things the government doesn't want printed. We guarantee that
defendants cannot be forced to incriminate themselves, which means
that sometimes bad guys go free. We accept these risks as the price of
liberty.
The president would probably respond that in an era of loose-knit
terrorist groups and suitcase nukes, the risks are exponentially
greater than those his predecessors faced. Even if you agree, the
answer is not to act unilaterally but to go to Congress and the courts
and ask them to redraw that line between state power and individual
freedom.
These are not tactical decisions about where a tank division should
cross the Rhone. They are fundamental questions that go to the nature
of this union, and the president is required to trust the American
people to decide them.
End of experiment. Please return your rose-colored safety glasses to
the front of the class.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/opinion/27tues2.html
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atheistrefuge/messages?msg=1786.9836
The Census Bureau should get to work immediately on procedures that
would allow it to count inmates where they actually live.
The Road to Riches
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/5ba95f4634dec9cd
and thread
The Road to Riches
http://tinyurl.com/55nzo
A Blueprint for the Future
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/59c28cd6dfe6f60f
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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